Nonureva Really Surprised!

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

rine_wolve For me, this movie was definitely about a fragile-minded girl feeling desperately alone... and taking to the extremes, what she was willing to do in order to not feel like that anymore. Loneliness and fear can posses us, just like demons. They can drive us crazy. This horror movie is a slow-burner and definitely not for everyone. The idea behind it is very good and well played upon... I'm just not really sure that it needs the gory parts to be this explicit. It felt a lot like gratuitous gore. Or maybe it just seemed much too real and grotesque... more like real-life murders, than a movie. So what would You be willing to do, in order to not feel alone alone anymore? Whose company would yo accept... and, if the connection were lost, what would you be willing to do in order to reconnect?

Tornadolane I had this movie on my watchlist for a long time along with The Witch. I didn't watch either of them because the title "The Blackcoat's Daughter" made me think it was a period piece along the lines of The Witch. Strangely, A24 wanted the name changed from February to The Blackcoat's Daughter which actually turned me away from the film. Anyhow, this film terrified me and I couldn't have been more clueless. Some say The Blackcoat's Daughter is a slow burn but it isn't. The horror is there from the very beginning. Sit with this movie and quietly watch. It isn't cerebral, pretentious or artsy, it's just a darn good scary story. Watched it several times and STILL find something new every single time I watch it.

Michael Kleen (makleen2) A young girl's isolation at a Catholic boarding school in Upstate New York leads to increasingly disturbing behavior, while a psych-ward escapee drifts closer, in the nail-biting supernatural thriller, The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015). Originally titled February, writer/director Oz Perkins intended this film to be a meditation on loneliness. He crafted a creepy and disturbing tale that has all the elements of a good horror movie.The film is essentially divided into two stories that progressively come together in a surprise ending. In the first, a freshman girl named Kat (Kiernan Shipka) is staying at her Catholic boarding school over winter break because her parents have failed to pick her up. Rose (Lucy Boynton), a senior, told her parents the wrong date to buy time so she could find out whether she was pregnant. They are watched by two nuns. Rose receives several phone calls from a mysterious voice she calls "Dad," and her behavior becomes more disturbing with each phone call.In the second story, a man named Bill (James Remar) picks up a young hitchhiker named Joan (Emma Roberts) over the objections of his wife, Linda (Lauren Holly). It's implied Joan escaped from a hospital, but Bill believes she reminds him of his daughter, Rose, who was brutally murdered several years earlier. Bill and Linda are traveling to their daughter's former school to lay flowers. Bill tries to emotionally connect with Joan, believing God brought them together. Joan replies that she doesn't believe in God.**Spoilers** At the school, Kat brutally murders Rose and the nuns, decapitates them, and offers them up to Satan in a macabre ritual in the boiler room. A police officer confronts her and fires a shot. Later, in the hospital, a priest exorcises the demon from Kat, and she sees a shadowy figure disappear. In the present, Joan (now revealed to be a grown-up Kat) kills both Bill and Holly, steals their car, and completes her journey back to the boiler room, only to find it unlit and silent.Like No Country for Old Men (2007), The Blackcoat's Daughter uses stark realism and little dialogue to set the tone. Not much is spoken during the 93 minute run time, and even in the climax, Kat remains eerily silent. As the police office points a gun at her and repeatedly yells to drop the knife, she quietly replies, "Hail Satan." Unlike No Country for Old Men, music plays a prominent role in The Blackcoat's Daughter. The score itself scratches at your reptilian brain like something from the underworld.Kiernan Shipka, mostly known for playing Don Draper's daughter, Sally, in Mad Men (2007-2015), adds a subtle charm to her role. Her character in The Blackcoat's Daughter doesn't display much emotion, and has few lines, so poise and control is where her talent shines through, especially when called upon to flash a mischievous smile. Unfortunately, she hasn't appeared in much else recently, although she's set to play the titular role in a reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.The Blackcoat's Daughter suffers from the 'Christianity is Catholic' trope. At least since The Exorcist (1973), horror films have associated the Catholic Church with mystery, superstition, and demonology. Even though many Protestant denominations believe in Satan and demonic possession, if the Devil appears in a movie, you know the Catholic Church will be involved. It's not terribly distracting in this film because the director uses it so subtly, but it's my one complaint.As a horror film, The Blackcoat's Daughter does everything right. A good horror movie goes beyond simplistic scares, and The Blackcoat's Daughter uses a typical horror theme to explore the larger themes of loneliness and emotional isolation. It concludes like a dark symphony. At the end, you feel the loss Kat has for her deceased parents, the life she could have had, and the horrible crimes she committed. Now she has to deal with the consequences of her actions alone, and she finally breaks down and cries.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "The Blackcoat's Daughter" (US title, the better one in my opinion) or "February" (UK title) is a Canadian 90-minute movie from 2015, in the English language of course, so still a relatively new movie that soon gets a DVD release here in Germany I think. The director and writer is Oz Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins, and this is his first directorial effort as he was a prolific actor until now mostly. With Remar, Holly, Roberts and Shipka, he got a pretty decent cast together, the 3 ladies are for example very famous for their small screen acting (Mad Men, NCIS, American Horror Story). But back to this one here. The film includes two core story lines who seem to have basically no connection almost and also seem to take place during very different times, there is a huge gap between these, so it is not a chronological story at all. The one thing I want to say here is that I am a huge Kiernan Shipka fan and everybody who has seen her on Mad Men will have a hard time making a case against her being the most talented actress under 20 right now that Moretz and Steinfeld have passed that mark. And she also did not let me down here. Luckily, the longer the film goes the more she moves into the center of it all and definitely elevates the material on several occasions. There is one phone scene in particular where she really shines with her face expressions. I think she really combines dedication and vulnerability so well that I am positive we will see a lot of greatness from her in the coming years, probably decades.The rest of the cast was okay too. The acting really wasn't the problem here and I even liked Emma Roberts and I am usually not too big on her. The problem is the execution though. It is all quantity over quality. Almost every scene is supposed to be scary and creepy and it quickly becomes annoying. There is zero build-up and as a consequence also almost zero good moments. The few jump scares did not really add anything either. I am sure Perkins sees a lot more in this film than audiences do. But he just did not get his vision through, mostly with his writing, but also with the direction. In my viewing, I even heard people laughing at how bad it was at times and that's the only explanation as there are 0% comedy in here unless you c(o)unt the unexpected and random inclusions of the c-word. The exorcism scene near the end is the best example. It is a really crucial moment, but it feels rushed in for the sake of it as Perkins is puzzling together snippets that have worked in horror films over the last years, decades even, but it's never more than snippets. They are not really fitting together. The music, score, soundtrack (call it whatever you like) is not helping either as it added a great deal of negativity to the showy over-the-top way in which basically every scene should be memorable, but the opposite was achieved, namely that the memorable moments became forgettable. Not even the atmospheric take was successful with the (almost) empty school. Or the reference about the burned hair of the two women, which was there, but never picked up on again. It was truly shoddy to watch at times. There was such a good opportunity for a quality film here given the cast, but they definitely missed out on it and the outcome is a great example of how script is key and even strong actors cannot make a weak story work. I give these 1.5 hours a thumbs-down and suggest you watch something else instead.